Dunno if this is withing the domain of construction techniques but ….
I’m wiring in some telephone lines and I’m curious whether it’s considered acceptable to wire all the outlets in series or …. should each outlet be homed to a terminal strip?
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Daisy chain versus star pattern.
Daisy chain, where each outlet is wired through another in a chain that eventually ends at the main box, gives you shorter runs and so saves wire and some fishing in existing structures. It also increases the number of connections between any phone jack and the main box. This can make each outlet, as you move from the main box, less clear and to have more static. The phones still work and ring but the connections tend to be poorer. OK for voice they are usually less than ideal for data. It was the standard pattern for residential telephone wiring into the 60s or 70s.
Star pattern, where each jack has a separate line back to the main box, uses several times more wire but each outlet has a lot fewer connections. The smaller number of connections means each, assuming they were run correctly, outlet has a clearer signal, less static and is clean enough to maximize data transfer rates when used for networking between computers. It also make trouble shooting easier as each outlet has only two sets of connections.
Star pattern, there are many names, is the preferred pattern for any lines even slightly contemplated to be used in the future for networking. Most electricians I know use this pattern almost exclusively.
It's not quite as clear-cut as that Dennis. There used to be all these 'rules of thumb' about no more than 5 devices on a loop (i.e in series) and the loop shouldn't exceed 300' in total. At one time the rule was to add up the "LN"s on the phones and not to exceed a total of 55 (I've heard different maximums from differernt sources). These days, the "5" rule is just fine because the loads the new electronic phones put on circuits are a fraction of the old 2500's or a handset with a mechanical bell.
There are countless online manuals for wiring telephones - some have a lot of stuff the average DIYer never thinks about, but you should know. I picked off a few, didn't check them to see which is good/bad
http://telecom.hellodirect.com/docs/Tutorials/TelWiringBasics.1.040401.asp
http://www.epanorama.net/links/wire_telecom.html
http://massis.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/technical/wire-it-yourself
http://www.nref.com/phone/phone_faq.html
http://www.sandman.com/pdf/Page93.pdf
Here's more than you ever wanted to know about load http://www.hut.fi/Misc/Electronics/circuits/teleinterface.html
Phill Giles
The Unionville Woodwright
Unionville, Ontario
Hey Phil : Great web sites.To everyone else thanks for the info,it will come in handy with my new house.
If you homerun every location back to a central box, you can then decide to use the line as a phone or data line (as part of a home network). Most structured wiring schemes recommend at least two Cat-5 and two RG-6 cables to every room (with many rooms receiving several jack locations). Look at Leviton's web site--they have an excellant structured wiring guide--covers voice and data and cable.
From about 1890 until maybe 1970, just about the same simple wiring would work for any phone. A couple junction boxes all wired in series and one line for the whole house. Things change a little faster now. Pretty much whatever you do will be obsolete within the next decade. A couple years ago it was standard to put in a couple CAT-5 wires for ethernet along with the phone. Now wireless is making that a less necessary thing. What I'd do these days is run a pair of CAT-5E 4-pair cables for phone and whatever, plus two RG6 coax cables. The cable is reasonably cheap. The jacks and plates contribute a lot to the overall cost. Just put jacks on what you need now and leave the other wires stuffed in the wall. One CAT-5E cable will run up to 4 phone lines. The other is a spare in case you want ethernet or more phones. The coax is for cable or satellite or antenna. Run everything back to one junction box. Leviton boxes are OK, but not really cheap. Easier to make changes that way. Don't install boxes in the walls, just use plaster rings. Too hard to stuff excess wire back in the box, particularly for coax. For all the effort involved in running cable, I'd spend the extra $200 and run the extra wire. Leave a foot or two stuffed in the wall. The first time you need an extra wire, it will pay for itself. Will it be obsolete next week? Yep. Probably. Next year you'll use optical fiber or wireless or maybe mental telepathy.
Good point about obsolescence.
Where practical it pays to run conduit as future planning for upgrades. Less of a benefit where there is access, as when you have an attic or crawl space above or below the outlets in question, conduits pay for themselves where access is more difficult. I have seen people have to put up with miserable data speeds over glorified doorbell wire, commonly used in the 40s and 50s to wire telephones, because there was no easy way to get the lines in short of major reconstruction. A few dollars in conduits could have saved the day no matter what hardwired technology does in the future.
I have been on sites where we ran a dedicated 4" conduit. Overkill as usually there were only two fiber optic lines going in. Each about as big around as a pencil. It did make the cables go in smoothly. No binding. Residential customers do well with 1".
Yes, I like conduit. Its usually a bear to install except in new construction and people don't usually want to pay for it either. I'll try to put conduit from the service POP to the distribution box. That makes it easy if they get cable or some other service installed. Inside the walls, I try for a riser up to the attic so cable can get pulled down to the second floor. Basement or crawlspace is usually easy enough to run new wire as the occasion happens. Just those two runs of conduit can make things much easier. Its nice to have it in other places, but I'll make a stronger case for it in commercial rather than residential. I also run a pull cord and leave it. If the next guy remembers to run a pull cord along with any new cable, it makes things even easier.
Thanks, everyone, for your kind and informative information.
This house was prewired with old telephone wire not to much a distant kin from common bell wire I'm thinking. The service isn't too bad but for the second line which will be almost strictly data, I'll branch wire any/all jacks from a central terminal block as suggested.
The electrical contractor that has done work for me here suggested using CAT-5 computer cable for the phone wiring. How is this better than regular phone wiring? The red/green/black/yellow stuff? The previous owner left a huge spool of this latter in the house and I'd like to be able to use it.
...........
Dennis in Bellevue WA
[email protected]
Regular phone wire is "Cat-3" or something similar. Fewer twists per inch. No reason why you can't use it for basic telephone wiring. But, it doesn't perform as well for multi-line wiring. With Cat-5, you can put 2 or 4 lines in a cable. I would't do that with Cat-3. Use a cable per line. Also, Cat-3 will not work for ethernet but Cat-5 works for both. If you think you'll never need networking and want to save $100, go ahead and use what you got.
Thanks for the info, Bob. I've got quite a bit of CAT-5 cable as well so anything new I'll use that. We will be installing computer networking in several locations where I'll use the CAT-5, of course. I just wondered what the difference was between the two. Now I know.
Thanks again.
...........
Dennis in Bellevue WA
[email protected]
"Star" patterns work better over the life of a house (so far). Makes it a lot easier to convert a jack to a second line, or a dsl connection down the road.
Data connections are what they are. Cat-5 and Cat-6 wires have all sorts of limitations & minimums for best use (twisted pair Cat-5 should not run parallel to a working phone line, for one).
Properly networking a house takes more information than can usually be known while it is in a shell condition. Wireless networking is making inroads for this very reason. (Hard enough to say "the TV will be 'here' for ever more," let alone the computer must be here . . . )
Another way to look at this is, with cordless/wireless connections, how many jacks do we really need? Conceivably, you may only need two, one for the answering machine & cordless phone, the other for a dsl connection.
what is the trick to get flourescent light buzz out of the phone line? low intensity but it is there
Bad connection somewhere. The wire is (or should be) twisted and fairly resistant to that sort of interference. If you have a stretch of wire someplace that's not twisted (really old wiring) it could be the problem. Otherwise, make sure all connections are tight and you have not accidentally grounded either of the phone wires. That can do it too.
wain,
The buzz on your phone line may be coming directly from the wire, or it may not. I mention this because both I and a friend have found that leaving a dialup modem connected to the phone line allows the buzz from household radio frequency sources (like ballasts and dimmers) to ride on the phone line. Unplug the modem and the buzz goes away. It may not be your situation, but if it is, it costs nothing and very little effort to find out. The modem acts like an antenna to receive the signal and put it onto the line, even when the computer is turned fully off.
Probably not the wiring unless you have an excessive amount of of RFI, like being under a 50,000 watt radio station.
More likely a defect in the modem that unbalanced the line. Telephone line are balanced with respect to ground, but if there is any load that is put on them goes from one of telephone wires to the ground you will get noise in the line. And it does not take much.
A "basic" phone (one that is not connected to AC power) does not have any connection to ground and thus can't do this. A modem does have connection to ground and could do this.
But I had a strange one. I have a phone in the garage that is just under a floursecent. And the wire runs up behind it. And ever time I used that phone it had a very bad hum. I did not use it that much and assumed it was the wiring. But it would cause problems even when the light was not one. And I rarely used that phone so I did not try to find the problem. This went on for 15 years and I needed to replace a couple of other phones so I did some checking and swaped phones. The problem was strickly in the phone.
Kind of surprising as I am not sure what would cause that kind of problem in the phone, but still allow it to work normally.
We had a problem similar to yours under a flickering flourescent at a law firm we'd put a LAN into years ago. Older wiring - 10 mb ethernet coax - picked up some kind of emi or rfi radiating from the light. We replaced the light bulbs and the problem went away for a while, but then returned. We replaced the fixture and the problem went away and didn't come back.Gavin Pitchford
"Sail fast - live slow"